


The Secrets Between Us

by PinkLetterDay



Series: Coldflash vs Olivarry polyam AU [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Prison, Relationship Reveal, pre-series AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 12:57:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14473239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: Henry gets to meet the new man in his son's life.





	The Secrets Between Us

Ten to eleven am every other Sunday had been the favourite part of Henry’s week for the past fourteen years.   
  
It was his lifeline, when this claustrophobic purgatory of an existence “inside” felt like a sick joke, when he was tempted to burn away all traces of the man he had been and become just another bitter shell drudging through the rest of his years. When he felt like giving into numb despair or bursting out like an enraged beast who would rather die than be caged a second longer, he held onto the thought of every other Sunday morning. Because at the end of every fortnight at ten am, rain or shine, his boy would come to see him.   
  
Henry had stopped believing in God around the time he had found Nora dead in the living room and the legal system had summarily shoved him in this cesspit and lost the key. Not that he’d ever told Barry. He wanted his son to think that his father was the same man who had tucked him in with bedtime stories about bravery and honesty, not the guy who had gotten in a fight in the prison yard with some punk skinhead.  
  
He didn’t need to believe in God. He had Barry. Please God he had Barry.   
  
The guards knew his child’s by name now, knew he belonged to “old Doc Henry”, which made him both terribly proud and sad, and cracked jokes that Barry accepted with good humour. His sweet face lit up every single time he first saw him, as though seeing his father across the school yard and not a visitation room sectioned by glass-fronted walls and a phone bank. Henry was so afraid that Barry would one day see the terrible hunger that gripped him then, the maddening want to to smash through the glass just to touch him, the child he had only been allowed to see and not hold for fourteen years.   
  
So when Barry came through the doors and smiled at him that Sunday, it took him a while to register the presence of the handsome man that brought up the rear.   
  
“Dad!” Barry’s grin lit up the joyless grey room. Henry basked in it, pressing the receiver close to his ear, letting his son’s voice melt away the tension of a fortnight. “How have you been?”   
  
_Huxley tried to kill himself, a man named the Jackal wants me to help push drugs and I think the new kid has a thyroid problem but the infirmary doesn’t give a shit_. “I’m all right,” he said as always, “they finally put in a vending machine. I get to have Doritos again!” Henry smiled easily and watched Barry’s customary moment of hope that his father would say anything more deflate. “I see you brought a friend.”  
  
Henry thought the man must be only a few years older than Barry but carried himself with a gravitas that seemed to add many more years to his presence. Perhaps it had to do with the expensive cut of his clothes, or the watchful intensity of his eyes, or the broad, powerful build obvious even under the casual shirt and blazer. He seemed very familiar to Henry somehow, although he couldn’t think why.    
  
“Dad,” Barry seemed nervous and Henry tried not to tense. “This is Oliver Queen. Oliver, my Dad.”  
  
Of course. The Queens of Starling City. Moira Queen’s confession about building an earthquake device, consequently being charged with terrorism and murder and her son Oliver taking up the reins of the company. He had seen the man on the news speaking decisively of the family’s resilience and commitment to rebuilding Starling’s trust with Queen Consolidated.  
  
Henry was even more lost now, as he stared between them.   
  
“It’s an honour to finally meet you, Dr. Allen,” said Oliver Queen into the phone Barry held between them.  
  
“Well, no one’s said that about me in a while,” Henry chuckled uneasily. “But it’s good to meet you too, Mr. Queen. Although I can’t say I expected it.”  
  
“Please call me Oliver,” said Queen with a smooth smile. There was a studied charm about him that Henry automatically distrusted. “Barry does.”   
  
“I wasn’t aware you were friends, Barr.” How did a CSI wind up meeting an actual billionaire, same city or not? More to the point, why hadn’t Barry ever spoken of him before?   
  
Barry ducked his head, ears pinkening. “We, uh, met briefly just before his yacht sank. At a college party. Reconnected after I moved to Starling.”  
  
Which was not long after Queen had been found and returned home, now that Henry thought about it. The Queens made the news frequently and dramatically, it would seem.   
  
“I heard about that,” he told the young man. “I’m sorry for what you’ve had to go through. Losing a loved one so suddenly and senselessly…it’s one of the worst traumas in life.” He remembered feeling a deep but distant sympathy for the boy while watching the news last year. No one deserved that fate, no matter how much of a privileged brat he was said to be.   
  
Queen’s shoulders relaxed incrementally, though his expression remained even. “Thank you,” he said, his tone sincere. “Not many people understood so well when I came back home. Barry was one of the few who did.” The corners of his mouth turned up slightly at Barry, tinged with something like tenderness.   
  
Henry’s brow furrowed. “I’m glad that the two of you were able to be there for each other,” he said. “I worried about you when you decided to move to Starling out of the blue, Barr. It’s always been a rougher city, and you didn’t know anyone there as far as I knew.”   
  
Barry awkwardly rubbed behind his ear. “Actually, Dad, I wanted to explain about that. I know I never gave anyone a reason.”  
  
“It didn’t have anything to do with the man with the arrows, did it?” said Henry wryly, with a hint of satisfaction when Barry jerked back, wide-eyed. Queen’s expression of polite interest never wavered.  _Interesting._    
  
“How did you know, Dad?”  
  
Henry rolled his eyes and sighed. “You’ve spent the last thirteen years obsessively chasing the impossible, son. I didn’t put it together at first, but all kinds of weirdness popped up in the news from Starling around the time you moved there.”  _Vigilante archers, a drug dealer named Count Vertigo and earthquake machines of all things. Christ._   "You don’t think you could pull the wool over your Dad’s eyes, did you?“   
  
"But you never said anything!”   
  
“What could I say, Barry, except be careful?” said Henry wearily. “I’ve been saying that to you since you were eleven and running away from the Wests' house to see me, insisting to anyone who’d listen about what you saw that night, skipping classes and work to hunt down leads on all kinds of strange cases all over the country. No one has ever been able to talk you out of something you had made up your mind to do,” Henry smiled sadly. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t lain awake at night all these years worrying about you.”   
  
Barry nestled the phone back against his ear and rested his hand against the dirty glass, deeply contrite. “I’m sorry, Dad.”  
  
Henry traced his boy’s fingers through the impenetrable half inch of barrier that separated them. “It’s just what a parent does, son,” he said, fighting down that powerful, roiling need to push until his hand fell through to touch Barry’s. “We worry endlessly about our children, knowing we have to let them make their own choices, no matter how dangerous and foolhardy they seem.”   
  
“It’s not foolhardy to prove the truth,” Barry looked down stonily, his resemblance to Nora’s father suddenly more pronounced. “I can’t live my life doing nothing while you’re locked up in here, don’t you understand that?”   
  
This was the old argument that they kept returning to, one that was useless to waste precious moments retreading. Henry sighed deeply, as always hiding both his despair and gratitude at Barry’s stubbornness. He turned to Queen. “What about you…Oliver? Do you believe Barry?”   
  
Barry gave the receiver to Queen, who seemed to measure his words carefully. “I trust your son saw... _something_ , Dr. Allen. In my time away, I have seen…things that I have never been able to explain, or ever tell other people without being called insane or a liar. I’m not so quick as most people to dismiss the impossible.”   
  
_Time away._ That was one way of phrasing it.   
  
“I believe you’re innocent, Dr. Allen,” said Queen gently.    
  
“Because Barry says so?”  
  
“I trust his judgement,” Queen smiled and this time it was less practiced. “And I’ve seen enough guilt to know when I don't see any.”   
  
Henry wondered whether he meant his parents, Malcolm Merlyn or himself. Nevertheless, he couldn't help feeling a wary gratitude at one other person in the world possibly believing them.  
  
“Thank you, Oliver. You know, as much as I enjoy being called "Dr. Allen” again, you can call me Henry,“ he said, genially dispersing the tension of the last few minutes. Queen inclined his head in thanks, his smile growing ever more sincere. "I still don’t understand why you dragged your friend along to Iron Heights to confess why you moved, Barry."  
  
“That’s not exactly what I wanted to tell you, although it’s related,” Barry squared his shoulders. “I met Oliver again while investigating the Arrow. That’s how we met again. Oliver was kidnapped the day after he came home and the vigilante saved him. The police had him in to give evidence several times.”   
  
“You worked together to find a wanted vigilante?” Henry couldn’t keep the disapproval out of his voice.   
  
“On the contrary, Dr. Allen. I told him that the Hood was a dangerous lunatic and he should stay away,” Queen again had that tenderness in the muted smile he gave Barry. “Like you said. He didn't listen.”   
  
His son rolled his eyes and quirked a lip. “You did distract me though."

"You distracted yourself,” returned Queen, lightly teasing. Barry again ducked his head, pressing his lips together to hide a smile. 

  
Just like that, a light bulb went on in Henry’s head. “You’re together.”   
  
Barry’s head shot up so fast he probably cricked his neck and Queen’s face went completely blank.   
  
“How did you figure that out?” Barry gaped at him.   
  
How? Did they even see how they looked at each other? Did they know what they looked like, sitting across from him, shoulders brushing, all shy glances and soft looks and blushes? Queen was probably holding Barry’s hand under the counter.   
  
“Call it a lucky guess,” he said, with a huff of exasperation, “You two aren’t exactly subtle. Is this the mystery person you’ve been mooning about since last year?”   
  
“Seriously? Do you just know everything?,” said Barry in disbelief, “And I didn’t  _moon_ ,” he pouted at Queen, who was looking smug.   
  
“Of course I know everything. I’m your father. I know all. I see all,” Henry laughed as his son continuted to stare at him, “Do you think I don’t know what you look like when you have feelings for someone, Barry?”  
  
Queen looked on in open amusement as Barry groaned into his hands, the tips of his ears scarlet now. “Really damn obvious, apparently.” But he resurfaced and leaned into the phone mouthpiece affectionately. “Thanks for giving me time to deal with it on my own, Dad.”  
  
“Has it been ‘dealt with’?,” asked Henry carefully eyeing the two, “You were rather down for a while there in the summer, Barr.”   
  
He had been so relieved and proud at the way Barry had healed and moved on from his heartbreak in college, only for his stomach to drop when Barry once again appeared with hollow cheeks and listless eyes, try though he did to disguise it. Fate just did not seem to cut his boy a break.  
  
Protectiveness flared in his chest at the memory, and he kept his eyes on Barry so he wouldn't glare at Queen.   
  
The man’s head bowed. “It was -”  
  
“A mutual misunderstanding,” Barry cut across him. “We're good now.”  
  
It was clear that this was the end of that discussion, and Henry subsided in some relief.   
  
Queen’s expression had returned to its former thoughtful inscrutability.  
  
“You’re an observant man, Dr. Allen,” he said, blue eyes even and intent. There was a disconcerting, calculating kind of intelligence there.  
  
_Much more so than you expected, I bet_. “Barry gets his smarts from both parents,” Henry quipped. “Exactly how long has this been going on?”   
  
“A while,” Barry hedged. Henry raised a pointed brow. The boy slumped sheepishly. “Since last year.” Henry raised the other eyebrow. “All right, almost since I first came to Starling.”  
  
There was still something his son wasn’t telling him, but Henry was used to Barry’s secrets by now.  For such an open-hearted child, Barry had learned to keep the things most important to him close to his chest. Even though Henry had been nothing but supportive when Barry had come out to him in college (had he really thought it would make a difference to his own father?) the boy had still been cagey about whoever he had been dating for almost two years.   
  
He supposed he ought to be glad that Barry felt able to share who it was this time.   
  
“I don’t understand why you took so long to tell me though,” said Henry, feeling a stab of the old hurt.   
  
“We didn’t get serious till now,” said Barry defensively.   
  
“We were always serious,” corrected Queen. “We just weren’t on the same page until recently.”   
  
“And also…um. I never actually came out to Joe and Iris,” Barry bit his lip. “It’s not that I think they won’t take it well or anything. It just…never came up.”   
  
A spiteful satisfaction spiked in him at the fact that his son still confided in him more readily than in Joe West. West may have taken him to ball games, taught him to shave and drive and helped fill out his college applications but there was a piece of Barry’s heart that would always belong only to his real father.   
  
“And it didn’t seem fair to tell only me and not Joe?”   
  
“That was part of it, yeah,” Barry self-consciously rubbed his ear again. “But mostly it was cause Oliver and I was sort of…undefined and I wasn’t sure either you or Joe would approve of casual hook ups with a billionaire playboy. Not that he is anymore,” he added in a rush, “it’s just what the tabloids still call him.”   
  
“You’re a grown man, Barry,” said Henry dryly. “You’re free to make your own choices.” Even though it was still weird to think of his child actually making any in that context. He hadn’t dwelled on it so much when he imagined Barry bringing home a sweet boy or girl his own age. But now, narrowly surveying the older, dangerously handsome man with his aura of mystery, he suddenly felt fearful and protective. Barry looked so young and soft next to him, his face full of open adoration.    
  
“So - what. You’ve been - er - "hooking up” all this time?“ Henry tried not to think of how Queen was twice Barry’s size and looked strong enough to snap him in half.   
  
"That’s what we called it,” said Queen, more of that guarded tenderness seeping out. “But I’ve been in love with him almost from the moment I met him.” This time Henry could clearly tell when he squeezed Barry’s hand under the table. His son’s face was scarlet as he stared at the counter, but his smile shy and so very happy.  
  
“We’re making it official now,” Barry continued. “Oliver’s already told his family and I’m coming out to the Wests at Christmas. We’re going public.”   
  
Henry paused. “Is that…wise?,” he asked, carefully. “Not to be discouraging, but there’s a lot of attention on your family, Oliver, what with your mother’s recent trial. You have a lot of enemies right now. Won’t putting Barry in the public eye make him a target?”   
  
The two young men exchanged a glance, a shadow of pain in Oliver’s but only resolution in Barry’s.  
  
“We’ve discussed that,” said Barry. “The fact is, the Queens have a lot of enemies, period. They’re always going to be chased by the media. It’s just part of being with Oliver. And I want to be with him. I don’t want to hide anymore.”   
  
“Is that how you feel as well, Oliver?”

A hint of pain creased the man’s lowered brow even though Henry could tell Barry was squeezing his hand again, out of sight.   
  
“I wish that that wasn’t true. I wish I could shield him from that part of my world,” Queen straightened and met his eyes steadily, “But I’m a realist…Henry. Sooner or later, someone is going to find out and sell us out. We’ve already had too many close calls. This way we head them off, control the spin. This last year, I’ve learned,” he sent a more openly fond, rueful glance at Barry, “that there is a time to hide and a time to come forward.”   
  
Like Moira Queen had come forward with her confession at the last minute. Henry wondered if her son had had any inkling of what his mother had been involved in, whether he went along with her plans or he had been the one responsible for her change of heart. Merlyn had been the one who had sunk the Gambit. It seemed unlikely that Queen would have stood by while his father’s murderer manipulated his mother.   
  
Good God, it was straight out of Hamlet. And Henry had thought he and Barry had a dramatic story.   
  
“I see,” Henry let out a deep breath and rubbed his free hand down his face, trying to make sense of it all. “So you’ve come for my blessing?”   
  
“Yes? I - I thought you’d be happy for me,” said Barry, sounding so young and uncertain that Henry’s heart ached.   
  
He smiled at his boy and spoke softly against the receiver, “I want you to have whatever it is in the world that makes you happy, son.”   
  
Barry’s face lit up, and his fingers tenderly carressed the glass. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, his sweet eyes pooling tears.  
  
“Thank you for telling me, Slugger,” said Henry gently. “It takes a lot of guts for you two to come out. I’m proud of you.”   
  
Queen bowed his head slightly in thanks and Barry wiped his eyes with a choked laugh. “I’m proud of you too, Dad.”   
  
Outwardly, he stayed calm and smiling, but inside, he drank the words in greedily and let them sink into his heart, warming him.  _Barry believes in me. My boy is proud of me._  
  
They moved onto lighter topics, chatting easily about Barry’s job, his and his boyfriend’s mutual friends (who were apparently Queen’s secretary and bodyguard. Henry filed this puzzle piece away to fit into the suspicions building in his mind) and their plans. His son, high on the success of his visit, was shining and exuberant, and even Queen with his guarded neutrality was softened and illuminated by him. Henry basked in Barry’s joy, heart full. It made him hold back the anxiety curling in his gut and the barrage of pointed questions he wanted to ask but couldn’t.  
  
However, a few minutes before their time was up, Henry interrupted Barry’s account of how Oliver had whisked them both away to Monte Carlo the previous weekend. “Barry, if you don’t mind, I’d like a word with Oliver in private.”   
  
“What? Why?”   
  
“It’s okay, Barry,” said Queen, “I expected your Dad to have some concerns.”  
  
“Well you can tell them to both of us!,” said Barry in annoyance. “Are you going to try and give him a shovel talk?”  
  
Henry chuckled. “I don’t think a shovel talk from me would be very convincing. Joe’s the one with the gun and the badge, he’ll have that covered.” Really, the thought of Joe West’s reaction to finding out about this was amusing. Personal animosity aside, Henry couldn’t help feeling grateful sometimes for West’s over-protective foster parenting.  
  
“Barr,” Queen laid a placating hand on Barry’s arm and he deflated.   
  
“All right. I won’t be able to come back inside if I go out though, and there’s still ten minutes left.” Barry looked at Henry reproachfully. The two of them had always hoarded every minute they were allowed to see each other like gold.   
  
“Just this once, son,” Henry pleaded.  
  
“Fine,” Barry sighed. He cradled the heavy phone lovingly against his cheek and put his hand against the glass again, “I love you, Dad.”  
  
Henry brushed his hand across the glass smeared with their fingerprints a final time, and turned his face into his own receiver. “I love you too, Slugger. I’ll see you soon.”   
  
He always said that, even though it would always be two weeks before they could meet again. Those fourteen days always passed too slow for Henry but it was his fervent hope that they would go quickly for his boy, that his bright, inquisitive mind would be too full of his own life to dwell and obsess over his father.    
  
Henry watched him leave the room, the iron bar locking with a clank that echoed dully in his own heart. Then he resolutely turned all his attention back to Queen.   
  
“Mr. Queen, you said you’ve seen enough guilt to know when you see none,” he began, gathering every remnant of the authority he had wielded in his old life. “In my time here, I’ve become good at something like that too. You see, prison is full of secrets. I’m far from the only wrongly convicted man in here, and yet when you put a hoard of people in close quarters and strip us of all privacy, everything we do get to keep to ourselves becomes a secret.   
  
"I wasn’t a man of many secrets when I first came here,” sometimes he barely remembered that man with his naiveté and suburban idealism, “but now I am. There are many things I keep from Barry and the few friends I have inside, just so I can keep whatever control I have left in this life. I _understand_ keeping secrets to survive.”   
  
Something flashed over the younger man’s eyes, before becoming, if possible, even more impassive than before.  
  
“But that’s no way to live out in the world,” Henry leaned as close to the glass as he could, trying to pierce Queen’s armour through his own reflection. “Especially not when you’re trying to have a real relationship with someone you love. In a prison, secrets can save you. Outside of it, they can break you. Whether you intend it or not.”  
  
Queen’s mask of polite interest was creasing at the edges. The sharp cut of his jawline became defiant and the hand resting on the counter clenched and unclenched slightly. Still he said nothing.  
  
“I can tell when a man has secrets, Mr. Queen,” he pressed on. “I can tell that Barry has his share of them too. Fair enough. I don’t like it but if I keep mine, he should get to keep his.”  
  
“But if there are things about you my son doesn’t know, if you think there are things you can’t tell him, then I’m  _begging_  you, as a father,” Henry struggled to continue as his throat closed up with anxiety, “please, please let my boy go before they hurt him.”  
  
The storm building behind Queen’s eyes disappated suddenly. He blinked rapidly, watching Henry gain back his composure. And then the mask fell away entirely.   
  
“You don’t have to tell me about the price of secrets, Dr. Allen,” there was a terrible sadness revealed beneath on the young man’s face, reaching out to Henry’s own. “You’re right that Barry doesn’t know all of mine. But he knows more than I wish he did, and I owe him a lot more.”  
  
“I don’t know why your son loves me, sir,” Queen pursed his lips for a moment as he stared unseeing at the hand  _(knuckles mottled, crisscrossed with scars, thumb pad roughened)_  that kept clenching between them on the worn lineoleum. “But he does. He loves me although he, more than anyone, knows exactly the kind of man I am.” Queen raised his eyes to Henry’s with deliberate intensity, and Henry knew he understood what he was asking.  
  
“And he’s…okay with that?” asked Henry, his own jaw tightening as he gripped his receiver.   
  
Queen nodded slowly. “He’s always been my biggest supporter. He hasn’t always…approved of some of what I do, but he and my friends show me better ways, and I listen.”   
  
Henry released a shaky breath. “Good,” he said falling back against the hard uncomfortable chair, although the invisible band around his his chest didn’t ease.   
  
“Dr. Allen, I don’t know what you’ve heard about…me, in here,” Queen brushed his fingers over his lips, uncertain  _(a glimpse of a burn mark peering between his crisp shirt cuff and plain gold and leather antique wristwatch)._  “All I can tell you is that it was Barry’s decision to seek me out, his own decision to support me, and he was determined to be with me when I tried to send him away. And honestly, I think I’ve grown strong enough to stop saying no to him,” his jaw set in determination as he looked Henry steadily in the eye. Clearly, like Barry, this was the one thing on which he would accept no challenge. “Whatever else you think of me, please know that I love your son, sir. He is my compass in everything I do.”   
  
Henry considered the other man, trying futilely to find the answers he wanted in the lines of that young face grown too old.  _He can’t be all that keeps you human. I hope to God that’s not what you mean._  
  
It was however, as good as Henry was going to get, and he had learned too many hard lessons in knowing his limits.   
  
He swallowed and nodded curtly. “I trust Barry’s judgment too…Oliver,”  _at least for now_. “Take care of my boy.”   
  
“I will,” said the man his son loved, speaking directly into the phone’s mouthpiece. “I promise.” There was an almost frightening intensity in his eyes as he leaned forward, protectiveness in every line of his body.  
  
The buzzer cut harshly through the air, and Henry’s stomach dropped on cue. “It was good to meet you, Oliver,” said Henry, squaring his shoulders. “remember to take care of yourself too. Barry’s lost enough people in his life.”   
  
He hung up the ungainly receiver with a clunk and stood up for the guards to cuff him before the other man could respond.  
  
When he looked back one last time as he was escorted back to his cell, Oliver Queen was still watching. The dim sunlight filtering through the bars in the window brought out the gold in his hair and beard, casting shadows over the man’s deep set features. For a split second, Henry could almost see a dark hood drawing over them.  
  
The iron binding his wrists felt heavier than ever. _I hope you know what you’re doing, Barry._


End file.
